Prepping: Tech Bench Sunday

Radio gear for emergencies?  Prepping?  Figuring out the Big Picture?  You’ve come to the right spot.

While I usually don’t post a column on Sundays, we continue pressing on with all kinds of odd pursuits.  Some of which include ham radio, more ham radio, hacking space-time, using LLLT therapy for inflammation reduction and neural stimulation, as well as working on an interesting side project dealing with “news diffusion.”

But first, a cute story of how “Universe plays” with us.

After getting up at the usual 4 AM to go play with the radio gear, I decided it was time to change the water filter in the fridge.  Easy to do:  Pop out old filter, shove in new and then run 5-gallons of water through the new filter…hit reset on the filter alarm and…done!

At least, that’s the theory.

In practice, after I got the filter changed and about one quart of water through it, suddenly the water dribbles to a stop,.  “Hmmm…just be the additional filter on the back is clogged.  I’ll just take the new one out, re-seat it, just to make sure…”

Long story short?  Turned out the water had gone off for the whole neighborhood due to a second pipeline break in the past week.  As I told you previously, rural water in East Texas is pretty good (read: no fluoride added, for example).  But, the downside is that being on red clay soil, and in a drought, when it rained a few days back, the land heaved and swelled and was doing the geological equivalent of a porn flick..

In slow-enough motion so as not to be ascertainable to human eyes, but resulting in a sizeable wet spot, nevertheless.  Ended up covering the county road until the water district got on it with the backhoe and such.

Notwithstanding the backstory, when “Universe signs” in  odd ways like this (a sigil in an email would have been fine, lol), we know that something is in the works having to do with “Water.”  Yes, call the pun police.

We’ve spotted a “water sign.”

The ham radio items next:

One of the oddities of the hobby (*which I’m 56-years into now) is that we like to see under a variety of conditions how many states we can talk to.

The ham radio organization, the American Radio Relay League makes that super-easy with this being Field Day weekend.  That’s when ham clubs all over America head to the woods, mountain tops, state parks, and fire up generators and such to prove their solid communications plans.

Since our home has a decent grid-tied solar setup, I thought about running in the “emergency power” class.  But, no.  That would preclude using the high power amplifiers.

The fun of it was:  In an hour and a half of operating, I was able to contact and exchange data with 23-states.  I was/am/is/are AC7X, running class 1-D in the NTX ARRL section.  *(Rules are online here)

Very noisy band conditions overnight and one disappointment?  My life-long pal “the major” and I weren’t able to hook up on 40-meters at 4 AM left coast time.  He’s one of the ops in the Seattle area running K7LED at Ft. Flagler State Park near Port Townsend.  Eventually, we expect some pictures to show up over here.

Our local ham club will be having a hamburger supper on Tuesday night where, no doubt, other Field Day stories will surface.  There’s a ham club almost everywhere – great way to meet nice people and get involved in a useful hobby.

I didn’t bother logging for an entry into the contest, but the short time I was on, I talked or rand Morse code contact with 23 states and depending on band conditions, maybe will pick up Hawaii and Alaska – both of which have first-hand experience with ham radio and local emergencies in their history.  My first introduction to EMCOMS was the 1964 Good Friday quake up in Anchorage helping a neighbor run phone patch traffic to “outside.”

My friend Jeff – upstanding member of the local ham club – did some training up at E.F. Johnson Company up in the Dallas area.  One  of the few surviving American radio outfits, he sent along some dandy pictures of the E.F. Johnson on-site museum:

And in one nook (of many) there it was!  The factory version of my first single side-band radio.  A Johnson Pacemaker!

Most of my collection is old Hallicrafters gear, but the Pacemaker was a dandy radio to use while in high school.  Eventually, I pulled a 3.9 in college (and a miraculous 4.0 in the masters) but this radio was the major distraction that held my high school GPA to a mere 2.7. (I think I was supposed to open the books…but didn’t get into that until later.)

No one was passing out ADHD meds in 1964, and even now I’m not sure they’re a good idea.  The “distraction-driven career” was far more fun than the “programmed, logical” one.

Tough choice in today’s world:  Program your own kids or send them to the EPROM place (public schools with Common Core).

Next is a note to Peoplenomics.com subscribers who may be building “light crowns” to experiment with.

Found out that if you use the NIR/660 NM LEDs from Amazon that I mentioned in the PN article on point, they don’t last worth a damn if you run them the tiniest bit higher than spec voltage.

So, if you power them from a nominal 3-volt power supply, or a couple of D batteries (3.3 V either way) – you will want to put a small resistor (2-5 ohms ought to work) to drop down from 3.2 to about 2.8 or even 2.7 volts.  Otherwise, the “big ugly of electronics” (mean time between failures, MTBF) will bite you.  Bit one of mine in 10-hours or run time at 3.2 volts.

Who said “resistance if futile?”  Sometimes it works…

If you read my book, Dimensions Next Door, you will find the ongoing research there of interest.

If you haven’t (shame!) the gist of the book is that a growing body of data suggests that space-time can be “hacked” with certain frequencies.  See the acoustic levitation videos on YT to see have basic standing waves can work.  Bruce Gernon’s book on the electromagnetic fog over the Bermuda Triangle.

Or, pop open any Bible and go to the horns on the seventh day of priests walking around Jericho…or the books cited in Dimensions.

What’s going on there?  A note to a colleague:

“Ordered up a digital delay line.

When you read through the stuff (Dimensions Next Door) book, seems the effects take place up in the 1,000 foot range of high spl’s. [reader note Sound Pressure Levels in db]

Or multiples of that.

So it hit me – not having a non-resonant passive reflector mountain handy – that I might be able to use a reasonably pure simple stereo delay line (or two) to simulate the effects.

So when you go on Youtube, for example, you can see small bits being acoustically levitated with ultra sound, but what if we could use phase arrival times to do the same thing at lower audio frequencies?

I’ve only ordered one to begin with – but if it show promise, then I will order more as needed. Looks like the Behringer effect generator will do up to about 5.4 seconds of delay (5400 msec.)

One question:  Have you ever looked at the images of your samples on a spectrum analyzer?

I keep trying to envision what the audio spectrum would look like on a “pharty sounding” instrument like a tuba – which the dengchen and ragdon trumps seem to possess…  Any cheap software you know of for looking at audio spectral energy displays (VST’s?)?

To which, my colleague offered this:

Just some quick thoughts…

Those Rag-dungs and Dungchens are quite something.  One would think that their frequencies/overtones may be beyond tubas.    It seems that these instrument had very specific playing techniques that took years to master. For them to be able to hurl boulders over distances is quite a feat.   My hunch says there may also be beating frequencies building up, reinforcing, and sustaining with each successive sounding (maybe like what Tesla was working on).

<<I keep trying to envision what the audio spectrum would look like on a “pharty sounding” instrument like a tuba – which the dengchen and ragdon trumps seem to possess>>

Audio analysis is a good idea. The low pharty sound seems similar to a modified sawtooth wav – like the low notes of the popular “Close Encounters” kind.   Maybe its the wav pattern too as sine wavs at high frequencies can shatter glass. Take a look at this Youtube clip that shows a spectral analysis of low Tibetan Dungchen –>  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdR5Ru8oF48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdR5Ru8oF48

<<what if we could use phase arrival times to do the same thing at lower audio frequencies?>> 

Using a delay line is a  very good idea (used to use a vintage UREI delay line back in the day).  I did a quick check on 5400 msec and elevation of 1000 feet and plugged in the spl.  Your calculations are spot on using –> http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-soundpath.htm  (brings back memories of density altitude in ground school).

It’s good you’re considering the space as a factor. There are so many complex factors such as absorption and reflective surfaces (mountains, meadows, preponderance of stone, cave openings, etc,)  as well as humidity, sound pressure levels, frequency drop-outs over distances, and sound dispersal patterns.

<<“Not having a non-resonant passive reflector mountain handy” >>

Perhaps another way to consider is sampled reverb (also known as convolution/impulse responses).  Sampled impulse responses take all these variables that are inherent in the spacial environment,  rather than trying to calculate every variable with ray tracing.  Just a thought.  There may be sampled impulse responses of outdoor spaces out there already.  There are sites that sell mountain impulse response (https://www.sound-ideas.com/Product/182/Outdoor-Impulse-Responses-Sound-Effects) and free impulse of outdoor areas. (See for example–>  http://www.openairlib.net/auralizationdb?keys=&field_space_cat_value=14&field_generation_value=All&field_format_value_many_to_one=All)  
Getting a close match of what you are replicating may not be easy but doable.

<<Have you ever looked at the images of your samples on a spectrum analyzer?s…  Any cheap software you know of for looking at audio spectral energy displays (VST’s?)>>

Yes, we’ve used spectral analyzers on all our samples.  The best ones are Izotope and Spectral Layers Pro.  Not cheap however.  A really handy free program is SPEAR  –> http://www.klingbeil.com/spear/
Love this program.  A little dated, but still does the trick and can re-synthesize sounds as well.

It may prove worthwhile to analyze these low Tibetan instruments and resynthesize them to get even better fat sound. It probably can be done.  I’m going to see if I can locate a low Tibetan instrument to sample. 

So we have the specific low frequencies, phase arrival times, volume, the type of wav pattern, the techniques and patterns the player employs, and the acoustical environment to consider.

Let me know if I can help.

Oh, trust me!  I will…

SPEAR looks at the sound card audio input, so if you’re looking at pre-recorded samples from a source like Garritan World Instruments, you will need to “loop back” from the sound card out to input.  AudioPipes might do the trick.  Or run on a separate effects machine, if your studio has two computers.

It might not make much sense to share this level of detail, but there are actually people who find this kind of line of original inquiry of interest.  Especially, those of us who don’t have a billion dollars to piss away on CERN with no particular deliverables in sight, yet.

The way I figure it, we’ve tied ’em all ready, lol.

Week ahead?  Just so….

Update on calculations of periodicity of the Kondratieff (Kondratiev for revisionists) on Peoplenomics Wednesday.

Working on some forward-looking research on “origin points for mass diffusion web events” for Saturday.

Somewhat related Tuesday morning will be a discussion of the National Dream Center’s new PROJECT CO-MIND.

That leaves us with “How to Eat a Book” as we continue lessons in brain-feeding tomorrow…

And in markets, we continue in cash.  Housing data comes Tuesday and that’s always more fun than a barrel big-wig donors.

Time for lunch…see you tomorrow and have a great “what’s left of it…”

George@ure.net